


opportunity knocks (the clear my road remix)

by Teaotter



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Gen, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-07
Updated: 2016-08-07
Packaged: 2018-07-29 20:37:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7698553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teaotter/pseuds/Teaotter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mick’s been thinking maybe he and Len should suggest heading to Starling with her. The drone strike’ll be done before they could drive there (if it’s even happening), and after that, he’s damned sure they could set fire to the rest of the town and still save enough people to scratch that itch for her.</p><p>(AU; set during the events of the S2 finale of Arrow)</p>
            </blockquote>





	opportunity knocks (the clear my road remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nirejseki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirejseki/gifts).
  * Inspired by [A Business Opportunity](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6905743) by [nirejseki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirejseki/pseuds/nirejseki). 



Mick thinks he wants to help. There’s a rumble in his gut when he looks at the woman across from him in the booth, a tight line between his shoulder blades like the moment between when a plan goes wrong and when Len figures out what to do next. Like a rock beneath the waves, turning the current of a river aside, there’s definitely something there that makes him want to move.

Mick thinks maybe it’s what other people mean when they say they want to help. Maybe. He’ll have to see which way it moves him.

“Fold.” Sara tosses her cards down in disgust. Again. She’s wearing blue, which usually brings out the color of her eyes. But tonight it just makes the dark circles stand out like she’d been punched.

It’s not what she looks like when she’s been punched. Mick’s seen that enough. In a fight, she gets to punch back. This... she’s just taking the beating.

“Not your night,” Mick says evenly, raking the untidy pile of quarters from the center of the table.

They’re sitting in their usual booth, high walls marking out the safest spot in the room, with the bar between them and the door. Saints and Sinners is the dimmest bar in a bright city, and Mick’s favorite place to pass the time, especially once they bought the place.

Cards are better with three, but Len’s minding the bar tonight, what with them being short-handed for the next few months. Apparently, even gay bartenders take maternity leave these days. Who knew? At any rate, they’re taking turns until the help wanted sign in the window brings in someone who doesn’t mind a temporary gig.

It’s a slow night all around. Plenty of the regulars caught the atmosphere and moved on to happier parties, or just thought better of it and went home. The news had been coming in all night from Starling City -- terrorists storming the streets, people dying left and right. There were rumors the governor was calling for a drone strike to end the mayhem.

Mick thinks it’s funny that the governor’s calling for the deaths of thousands, but he and Len and Sara are the bad guys. Law and order: gotta love it.

But Starling is Sara’s home town. She might’ve left, but she’s still got ties. It bothers her.

Sara just shuffles the cards and deals out another hand like she’s waiting for the storm to pass. She doesn’t bother to say her head’s not in the game. That’s something else Mick likes about her: she doesn’t feel the need to state the obvious.

He’s not so sure she realizes she still has the itch. For the hero thing. He knows she did it for a few months in Starling before coming to Central City. He can see it bite at her every now and then, especially when the news from Starling is vicious. With tonight’s news, it’s practically chewing on her leg, how bad she wants to go back. But she’s fighting herself, and it’s hurting her.

Mick wants that to stop.

Mick’s been thinking maybe he and Len should suggest heading to Starling with her. The drone strike’ll be done before they could drive there (if it’s even happening), and after that, he’s damned sure they could set fire to the rest of the town and still save enough people to scratch that itch for her.

He’s gonna have to run the idea past Len, though. Len makes the plans, and Mick figures this kind of offer could blow up in his face. He’s not good at people. Maybe it’s not even what Sara wants.

He’s still idly poking the idea -- the card game barely merits half his attention, and he’s winning -- when Sara's eyes track to the mirror that shows the front of the bar, and she freezes.

Mick tenses up himself, his first thought: _trouble_.

But then Sara hunches down in her seat and looks like she wants to disappear. Damn, is she embarrassed?

Mick can't help turning to look behind him at the leggy brunette who just walked in. Nice clothes, sharp cheekbones, expensive jewelry. The kind of thin you only get to be if you're a junkie or filthy rich, and Mick is betting on the second. She looks like she’s spoiling for a fight, or maybe coming out of one. 

She’s a little young for their canary, but otherwise her type. Mick turns back around. “Ex?”

“No!” But she flushes, and Mick chuckles at her.

“I'm looking for the owner,” the girl says to Len at the bar. She’s an imperious little twit, and not real bright. This is the wrong neighborhood for her and she knows it. Might as well paint a target on her back.

“You're looking at him.” Len barely bothers to look up from the beer taps. 

His answer throws her for a second. Then her chin comes up like a lighter flipping open, bravado and something that’s either anger or stupidity. Still, her voice drops too low for Mick to hear what she says next.

But he can hear Len’s answer well enough.

“I don’t know any Laura. And I’m not exactly the helping type, kid.”

Mick glances at Sara -- it’s her call. Len’s about to throw this girl out, in a way she’ll probably be too embarrassed to try again. Unless Sara wants to step in.

It doesn’t really surprise Mick when Sara’s jaw firms and she stands up. “Come on, Len, at least give her a drink.”

The girl turns in their direction, and her eyes widen when she sees Sara. Joy sweeps across her face, and Mick can’t help thinking that no one ever taught this girl to hide.

She stumbles toward them, and Sara sweeps her into a hug that’s a lot less awkward that he’d have expected.

Sara leads the girl back to the booth. Mick sweeps the cards away, checking both of them. Sara's eyes are a little too bright, but there’s no other sign of tears. The brunette's temper is burning back up again. She stares at Mick as if she expects him to leave.

He stares back as if she’s a cockroach in his dinner. No surprise, he’s better at it than she is.

“Thea, this is Mick.” Sara waves an introduction and slides into the booth. “Mick and Len run the bar with me.”

Mick lets a little of his amusement show as the brunette continues to stand awkwardly by the table. They do a hell of a lot more than just run the bar, but he guesses this girl doesn’t get to know that.

“Mick,” she says eventually, her voice clicking mockingly on the ‘k’. But she slides in to sit next to him, and the rest of the bar patrons turn back to their drinks.

Mick just nods as if she’d been polite about it and makes room. “Thea.”

“So this is a thing?” Thea tilts her head at the room. “The world thinks you’re dead, so go run a bar? I mean, you, my brother... I didn’t realize there was a handbook.”

Sara closes down, just like that. “It’s a living.”

“Right.” The girl turns her head to Mick. “How about you? World think you’re dead?”

“Only the last three years,” he says, utterly deadpan.

She stares back, anger flickering like flames across her face. Mick’s pretty sure she has no idea what she is, under everything people have asked her to be.

Of course, that’s true of most people.

“I don’t have to justify my choices to you, Thea.” Sara shrugs back into the leather booth, stealing the girl’s attention away. “So my life is complicated. So what?”

“Complicated.” Thea chokes on a laugh. “I guess I’ve come to the right place, then. I told Laurel I needed a place no one would come looking for me, and she sends me here.”

Now that flips all the switches, and Sara’s right there again, all lit up. “Where no one would look for you? Thea, what kind of trouble are you in?”

It’s Thea’s turn to shrug, her voice brittle as burnt paper. “Take your pick. My brother’s a lying sack of shit, my boyfriend’s a vigilante, and my father’s a monster. Not to mention that my city’s being torn apart by an ‘old friend’ of the family who killed my mother in front of me.”

Sara freezes, pity streaking across her face. “Oh, god, Thea...”

“No!” Thea jerks back, and Mick leans away from her enough to stay out of range. But all she does is clench her hands together on the table. 

“I’m done. I’m done being a scared little girl, I’m done being lied to. I’m not here so that you can take care of me.”

Mick can see that itch written all over Sara’s face. Thea might not want saving, but Sara wants to save her. Or maybe herself; at some point, Mick figures, Sara might’ve been a scared little girl who couldn’t fight back. They’ve all been there. It's just a small rock in one hell of a flood, but Mick can feel it pushing on him.

“You packed pretty light for someone who’s taking care of herself,” Mick says, mostly to see --

Thea turn that snarl on him again. “I can buy _things_. I can buy clothes and shoes and a place to live. I don’t need that. I need to be stronger.”

“You want to learn to fight.” Mick says it to Thea, but he raises an eyebrow at Sara: _Well?_

Thea looks back and forth between them, like she can tell something’s moving. “I never want to be helpless again.”

Sara’s expression hardens. “I’m sorry. I can’t teach you to fight.”

“I’m not weak --"

But Sara’s already shaking her head. “It’s not about weakness. Thea, the only way I know how to teach someone is to hurt them. A lot. Hit them til they fall down and then kick them until they get back up again.” Sara’s face is sad, like it’s a bad thing to learn to get back up. “I can’t do that to you.”

Thea hunches forward. “At least you wouldn’t be lying to me while you did it,” she says, bitterly.

But Sara shakes her head again. “I can find you a teacher. I will.”

But she means she’ll find Thea some nice boxing instructor, someone on the right side of the law and the moral line that Sara’s still drawing in her head. Someone who’ll make sure that Thea doesn’t turn out the way Sara has.

But Mick likes Sara just fine. So maybe he’s no good at saving people, but he knows how to back up his partner. He knows how to move when the currents shift over.

“I’ll do it.” Mick shrugs when they both turn to look at him. “It’s no skin off my nose if the pretty girl bleeds a little.”

Thea’s eyes narrow. “Awww, he thinks I’m pretty,” she says mockingly, but it’s clearly nothing she hasn’t heard before.

Sara is staring at Mick like he's grown a second head.

“What? I can’t take on a project now and then?”

Sara keeps staring. “Your projects usually burn down,” she points out, and she’s not wrong.

But it’s also irrelevant. “You don’t think she will?”

Thea snorts. “ _She_ is sitting right here.”

“Jump in any time.”

Thea narrows her eyes again, but this time she’s actually thinking. “The sign in your window says you’re looking for a bartender. I’m a bartender.”

Mick grins and turns back to Sara. “See? She can even help out while she’s here.”

Sara sighs, her eyes flickering around the room, and Mick knows she’s this close to saying yes. She wants to say yes.

“You don’t know what you’re getting into,” is what Sara finally says, which is probably the warning she wishes someone had given her younger self. Or one they did; he doesn’t think it would’ve worked on Sara any better than it’s working on Thea.

“It doesn’t matter. I can’t go home, and I won’t go crawling to Malcolm for help.”

Sara’s eyes flicker again, and this time, Mick knows it does mean trouble. “Malcolm Merlyn?”

“Turns out, he’s my real dad.” Thea laughs. It’s the first truly ugly sound Mick’s heard from her. “Did I mention that my family is just full of liars?”

Sara smiles at her, sympathetic and just a little bit worried around the edges. “Okay. I guess you can stay.”

“I’m pretty sure he already said that.” Thea tilts her head at Mick, who waves her at the bar.

“Go earn your keep.”

For a minute, he’s not sure if she’ll do it, and he doesn’t particularly want to just shove her out of the booth. But then she sweeps one hand up in an ironic salute -- “Yes, sir,” -- and heads back to the bar.

So Mick can turn back to Sara, whose face is determinedly, and falsely, pleasant. 

“Merlyn?” he asks softly.

“Al-Saher,” she murmurs back, catching Len’s eyes over Thea’s shoulder. “He’s a member of the League. Or he used to be.”

Len ceremoniously hands the bar towel to Thea before sauntering over to the booth. “Sara, what did I tell you about taking in strays?”

Sara laughs sharply. “Not my stray, in this case.”

“Really?” Len turns to study Mick: _Why?_ “You’ve never been one for puppies.”

Mick shrugs to both questions. Len’s seen the way Sara’s been about the news; he can make up his own mind about whether keeping Thea will actually help. “She wants to be a scrapper. I can do that.”

From the way Len’s eyebrows go up, he’s figured it out. He’ll come to a decision soon enough.

Sara leans in. “It’s a toss-up whether the Arrow or the League come after her first. But we’ll have trouble if she stays.”

But she doesn’t sound troubled. She sounds... all in, here, with all the lights turned on, in a way Mick hasn’t seen her in a while.

And he knows Len sees it too when he grins.

“Eh, trouble.” Len waves a hand: _We’ll handle it when it happens._ “But it's your puppy. If it pisses on the floor, you clean it up.”

Which is somewhere between _don’t fuck this up_ and _if you do fuck it up, don’t let Sara find out_.

Mick supposes that’s fair. He’s probably going to fuck it up.

But for the moment, his path is clear.


End file.
